Innovative neck-pain treatment device to enter next phase of development at Nova Scotia Community College’s Dartmouth campus

A Bridgewater, N.S., startup is hoping its pioneering Neck Tronics invention will put an end to chronic neck issues and make rehab and assessment easier.

The idea of a machine to treat neck pain comes from chiropractor Bill Smith, who was working on a patient one day at his office and thought there had to be a better way.

“I’ve been dealing with neck injuries for 20 years and I had this idea after I saw a patient three years ago. I started playing around with different ideas on how to strengthen the neck,” said Smith.

The company is being purposefully vague about how the device works to avoid competition, but it has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the government and promises to be an “innovative … solution for diagnosing and treating whiplash and concussion-related neck injuries,” according to its website.

“It’s really hard to get patients to do what you need them to do, even in a clinical setting,” Smith said. “At home, if they tell you they are doing strengthening, there’s a good chance they aren’t doing it right.”